He wrote stories in every comic-book genre -- humor, horror, romance and science fiction among them.

Mr. Newman even wrote comic books about things usually not thought of as comic books, such as Leave It to Beaver and I Love Lucy.

Starting in 1947, he wrote more than 4,100 stories totaling about 36,000 pages, the equivalent of 120 mystery novels, eventually writing for more than 350 comic-book titles.

In 1993, the comic-book historian Robin Snyder named Mr. Newman King of the Comic Book Writers after a three-year search for the most prolific writer in that field.

Mr. Newman was born in New York in 1924 and after high school enrolled at Dartmouth College.

He served in three theaters of war during World War II and then returned to Dartmouth, where a play he wrote as a homework assignment became the first original play staged by the Dartmouth Players.

Play writing remained his real love, but he soon found he could make a living by churning out stories for comic books.

He would make up an entire story, panel by panel, describing each drawing for an artist to follow. Then he wrote the dialogue.

In addition to writing comic books, he wrote five newspaper comic strips, The Lone Ranger, Smokey the Bear, Space Cadets, Robin Malone and Laugh In and branched out into screenplays and TV sketches for such stars as Boris Karloff.

In addition to his son, of Easton, Pa., he is survived by his wife, Carol, of Columbia; a daughter, Lisa Newman, of Goshen, Mass.; two grandchildren; three stepdaughters; and five step-grandchildren.